So how’s the European integration project going?

Your humble blogger is taking a brief break from teaching and zombie book-whoring publicizing recently-released research to start work on new research. This requires me to be in Europe for the week. So, for some local color, it’s worth asking how things are in the land of the euro, the eurozone, and the eurocracy. Last year, ...

Your humble blogger is taking a brief break from teaching and zombie book-whoring publicizing recently-released research to start work on new research. This requires me to be in Europe for the week. So, for some local color, it’s worth asking how things are in the land of the euro, the eurozone, and the eurocracy.

Last year, during the epth of the Greek crisis, I argued that, "When going backwards isn’t an option, and muddling through is no longer viable, the only thing left to do is move further along the integration project."

Last week, it seemed that France and Germany had come to the same conclusion. The Guardian‘s John Palmer provided a cogent summary on the deal that was being negotiated at Friday’s European leaders’ summit:

Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and the other EU chiefs will sound out the parameters of a breakthrough deal which could take the euro area – at the heart of the EU – towards a de facto economic government. The deal will offer massive financial support for countries under the currency market cosh in return for governments accepting that national economic policy in future will first have to secure the broad approval of the rest of the euro area.

New cracks emerged at a summit of European leaders on Friday, as the prime ministers of several countries raised strong objections to a Franco-German plan that would commit all 17 users of the single currency to co-ordinating their economic policies….

[T]heir initiative triggered a backlash from other European Union leaders anxious to defend their national economic, labour and welfare policies.

In the summit’s concluding communiqué, European leaders also appeared to back off a commitment to give the eurozone’s €440bn bail-out fund new tools to help shore up struggling “peripheral” economies.

An initial version of the conclusions committed the EU to giving the fund more “flexibility” – a code word for new authorities such as buying sovereign bonds of struggling countries on the open market. After extensive debate, that language was taken out, however, and now only binds members to give the fund “necessary effectiveness”, a clear watering-down.

Most countries profess broad agreement of the need for reforms along the lines Germany is demanding. Yet when confronted with the German-French package—the French have always favored some form of centralized economic management of the EU, including strict regulation and heavy taxation of the financial services sector that is centered in Britain—they balked.

Austria, with one of the lowest effective retirement ages in the euro zone, won’t go along with an increase in the retirement age. Portugal won’t buy into the end of wage indexation with inflation because it wants to offer a sop to public-sector workers whose wages have been cut by 5%. Neither will Belgium, Spain and Luxembourg. All in all, almost 20 countries at Friday’s EU summit objected to the Germanization of their countries for one reason or another. So Germany refused to sign on to an increase in the size of the euro-zone bailout fund. "It was truly a surreal summit," commented Yves Leterme, Belgium’s prime minister.

Stezler goes on to predict that there will be yet more Euro-muddling as a result of this deadlock. I’m sticking to my original prediction, however. As much as the European periphery dislikes the proposed grand bargain, some form of it will likely be accepted because the alternative outcomes seem even more unappetizing.

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So how’s the European integration project going?

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